skippy the bush kangaroo

Thursday, June 30, 2011

What Do You Do?

On my way home from work tonight, there was a guy already sitting on the bench at the bus stop I'd picked for myself. Out of the blue, he asked me if I knew where there were any AA meetings he could go to. We were on Richmond's Broad Street at the time, so I pointed inbound and said there was this place called Madison House...

He said he was from Tennessee, not Richmond.

Well, I rummaged through my backpack, pulled out the last AA meeting booklet my doctor had given me, and gave it to him. "I have the same problem," I said. "Madison House has a bunch of meetings throughout the week, at various times..."

As I was telling him all this, a "friend" of his came back from the 7-11 across the street with a 40-ounce bottle of beer. The guy (the first one, not his friend) then said to me that some judge had given him one last chance: he was to attend ten AA meetings by July 15, or he would go back to jail. He also said that he was 71 years old. Looking at him, I thought he was significantly older than 71, that's how rundown he appeared.

Plus, he had no money to get to any AA meetings. Not only that, he claimed he couldn't do much walking. I believed him -- it was a somewhat hot day, he was wearing shorts, I looked at his legs, and one of them had both a long gash in it and several small black ants crawling up and down it. I wanted to give him some money, but knowing what that would likely be spent on...

Jesus. What do you do?

I said, "Look, there's a number on that booklet you can call," as my bus was approaching. "They can help you, or at least guide you in that direction..." He thanked me as I boarded my bus.

I hope like hell he took my advice. That was the best I could come up with. At it sucked...

skippy's thursday nite music club

fukushima....schmukushima

it's safe...nothing to see here...move along....

british government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

"this has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally," wrote one official at the department for business, innovation and skills (bis), whose name has been redacted. "we need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. we need to occupy the territory and hold it. we really need to show the safety of nuclear." - the guardian

The Nazca Lines...

It's stories like these...

that renew some of the faith I've lost in Homo Sapiens over the years. The Nazca lines are just one of many testaments to our inexhaustible twin capacities for ingenuity and spirituality over the millennia that are out there. You could add to them the pyramids of Egypt, the caves of Lascaux, Stonehenge, the relics of places like Angkor Wat, Easter Island, and Norse Greenland, and so on. There's no way that I can explain what any of these things were all about in sufficient, never mind scholarly, detail. I just sense, on some level, that all of these ancient peoples were scarcely different from me when it came to making sense of the world they found themselves in -- and that they did in their times, as I am doing in mine, the best they could with whatever it was they had to work with.

If some of the people who drew some of those Nazca lines were to somehow join me in breeching the time barrier between us, I strongly doubt either they or I would make any headway in explaining ourselves or what we were trying to do. I don't know what they would have made of our planes flying over their desert outlines for the first time, but the first time I saw any of these lines, the most I saw were patterns in those lines, and nothing at all that might have hinted at anything spiritual or something else beyond ingenuity. Others have seen things hinting at extraterrestrial involvement in those lines. I never did, and I long held a contempt for those who did.

But at the same time, I never saw anything beyond those lines themselves for a long time. I still see no extraterrestrial involvement in the creation of the Nazca lines, but that's a red herring -- the point all along was to look at the people who drew those lines and try your best to figure out why they did that. I have settled on the insatiable twin human drives for ingenuity and spirituality as my own answer -- those do, of course, come in many, many forms.

One UFO Mystery Solved...

Last night, I left the apartment a little after 11 PM for the supermarket. On the way, I noticed an orange light in the eastern part of the sky that seemed to be flying my way; it was slowly getting brighter as it moved. I thought it was a passenger jet at first, since I see a couple dozen or so of those every day.

Well, it wasn't. The next thing I saw was a dim stream of sparks shooting out from behind the object, after which it began changing its trajectory. It seemed to stop in mid-air for a few seconds, and then it looked to be drifting away from my general direction. The orange light grew dimmer, and then faded away altogether.

Judging from what I'd seen, my best guess was that it was a military plane doing some night time maneuvers at a high elevation. The military has a pretty strong presence in Virginia, and I've seen planes flying at high altitudes in arcs similar to what I saw last night during daylight hours. But I didn't know for sure what I'd seen, so I called it a UFO and proceeded on to the supermarket.

This afternoon, I found out what it was. It wasn't a plane, it was a rocket:

An U.S. Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket carrying the Department of Defense Operationally Responsive Space office’s ORS-1 satellite was successfully launched at 11:09 p.m. EDT today from NASA’s Launch Range at the Wallops Flight Facility and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia...

Wallops Island is east of Richmond, on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, and I was indeed headed east when I saw that thing in the sky. So what looked like forwards to backwards motion to me at the time was actually upwards to downwards. It never occurred to me that what I saw was a rocket, but it makes a lot more sense than a plane. Call it an IFO.

little cayman islands on the prairie

you wouldn't know to look at it, but this small, unassuming home in cheyenne, wyoming, is a bustling center of american industry, with more than 2,000 companies registered to this single address.

reuters had a look inside the house, home to wyoming corporate services, a business-incorporation specialist, and found "walls of the main room are covered floor to ceiling with numbered mailboxes labeled as corporate 'suites'," while a lone employee answers the phone and sorts mail. - consumerist

Abolish the Republican Party Now

"He informed me by text while he was on the floor," [Erie County Republican Chairman Nicholas A.] Langworthy said of [New York, State Sen. Mark J.] Grisanti's Friday vote. "I urged him to stick by his word he had given. The people elected him on what he ran on. This is not tax policy or something. This is important stuff." [emphasis mine]

Good to know The Republican Party has ceased to give a shit about anything for which the Ancestral Party stood.

Boom, Boom, Acka Lacka Lacka Boom...

Boom, boom, acka lacka boom boom:

Musically, the 80s didn't have too many bright spots -- at least in my opinion. But "Walk The Dinosaur" was definitely one of them. I've always loved Was (Not Was). These folks were just plain awesome to me at a time when the vast bulk of their contemporaries did absolutely nothing for me -- and still don't.

skippy's monday night music club

michele bachmann is not smarter than a 5th grader

apparently she can't tell the difference between john wayne and john wayne gacy. i think the whacka-doodle has met her waterloo.

it came during yet another m.bach shout-out to her Iowa roots (she mentioned "iowa" 14 times in her 21-minute opener monday). this time, blinded with a hawkeyed torpor, she noted that legendary western star john wayne also was born in her hometown of waterloo, iowa.

close. wayne was born in winterset -- about 150 miles away. perhaps she was confusing the duke with clown-dressing serial killer john wayne gacy who lived and worked in waterloo. - sfgate

al gore essay puts him back in the spotlight. - with a frontal attack wednesday on obama's environmental record, the former vice president – in true gore fashion via a 7,000-word rolling stone essay – proved that he still commands an audience despite a decade out of public office - politico

medicines in water supply drug disposal can be tricky. - getting rid of a television, a gallon of kerosene or a set of tires in an environmentally friendly way can be done with relative ease in north jersey. but that small bottle of expired pills your doctor prescribed a few years ago? that's a bit more difficult - bergen county record

how do you drug test a city? check the sewer. - it only takes a teaspoon of waste water to reveal an entire city's eating or drinking habits — and also its drug habits. scientists in norway are using the technology, called sewer epidemiology, to drug test an entire city - npr all things considered

tepco failed to report possible hydrogen explosion. - tokyo electric power co. knew there could be an explosion at the no. 3 reactor at the fukushima no. 1 nuclear power plant the day before it happened, but didn't report the possibility to authorities. - asahi shimbun

don't drain the lake. - a bill rammed through the ohio house last week on a party-line vote, and similarly fast-tracked for senate passage this week, would allow businesses to withdraw as much as 5 million gallons of water a day from lake erie without even getting a state permit - toledo blade

natural disasters hit state budgets. the tornadoes and floods that pummeled much of the south and midwest also have dealt a serious blow to struggling state budgets, potentially forcing new cuts to education and other services to offset hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster aid. - npr

broups begin planning for flood aftermath of tree die-offs. - as the summer goes on and the waters stay high, public groups must start planning for the time when the water recedes and leaves behind it acres and miles of dead vegetation and thousands upon thousands of dead and dying trees all along the river. - bismark tribune

Basically Put...

It's A Bitch, No Question...

Boy George and I have something in common: we've both struggled to come to terms with our sexual orientations. Personally, though, I think his struggle has been more intense than my own. Unlike him, I've never gone to prison in relation to anything regarding my orientation -- being gay is just one of many parts of who I am, not something to shout about.

All the same, I've always admired the way he put that aspect of himself front and center during his heyday -- I'm too much of a coward to even imagine myself possible of matching him on that count. So I give you "Karma Chameleon."

just one more thing...

rest in peace, one of the premiere actors of his or any other generation and an iconic addition to police fiction, peter falk:

peter falk became synonymous with one of tv's most enduring franchises with his role as the disheveled and disarming lt. columbo. but his long thesping career encompassed everything from john cassavetes' intense indie dramas to the broadway stage to hollywood hits including "the great race," "the in-laws" and "the princess bride."

falk, who had suffered from alzheimer's disease and dementia in recent years, died thursday evening at his home in beverly hills. he was 83.

falk earned four emmys for his role as the rumpled los angeles police detective who famously never disclosed his first name. in the "columbo" telepics that universal tv produced for nbc and later abc from the early 1970s on and off through the early 2000s, lt. columbo was always assigned high-profile homicide cases involving l.a.'s rich and famous.

falk was a favorite co-conspirator of auteur john cassavetes as well as one of the funniest men to hit the big screen. his creation of lt. columbo, which he claimed he based on the detective from crime and punishment, was a radical departure from the then-current crop of gun-slinging rough and tough cops, in that he zeroed in on a suspect with logic, and never let go once convinced of guilt.

Monday, June 20, 2011

jon stewart, the patron saint of skippy international

takes on the slime monster of faux news.

of course...faux edited the interview to make them a little less, well, crazy.

speaking with host chris wallace, stewart referenced emails from fox news vice president and dc managing editor bill sammon to bolster his case that fox news resembles "ideological regimes" who receive "marching orders." stewart told wallace that fox news "reminds me of, you know -- you know, ideological regimes. they can't understand that there is free media other places. because they receive marching orders." stewart then said "and if you want me to go through bill sammon's emails" but was cut off by wallace.

stewart was referencing a series of leaked emails that media matters released showing sammon slanting his bureau's reporting. In one email, sammon ordered his news staff to cast doubt on established climate science. In another, Sammon directed staff not to use the phrase "public option," but instead the gop-friendly "government option" and similar phrases. sammon also sent emails highlighting "obama's references to socialism, liberalism, marxism and marxists" in his 1995 autobiography and slanting fox's coverage of president obama's 2009 cairo speech.

while the corporate media is concentrating on weiners

this bill would amend section 205 of the michigan zoning enabling act to specify that a zoning ordinance cannot prevent the extraction of valuable natural resources from any property unless "very serious consequences" would result from the extraction.

mitt romney...basement dweller

or so he claimed when he voted in massachussetts.

according to karger's timetable, romney and his wife, ann, bought a $12.5 million home in la jolla, california, in may 2008. ("i wanted to be where i could hear the waves," romney told the ap of his move to the west coast.) thereafter, romney became a regular at california political events, even campaigning for meg whitman during her gubernatorial bid. a year later, in april 2009, the romneys sold their home in belmont, massachusetts, for $3.5 million, and registered to vote from an address in the basement of an 8,000 square-foot belmont manse owned by their son tagg. but where the romneys really lived these past couple of years seems to be a bit of a mystery. while romney was appearing at so many california political events people were speculating he was going to run for office there, the national journal reported in may 2009 that the romneys had made their primary residence a $10 million estate in new hampshire. the discrepancies in the news coverage prompted karger to take a closer look, in part because he found it dubious that a guy worth $500 million would really be living in his son's basement. - mother jones

guess it's another version of "iokiurar." ann coulter apparently lived in her real estate agent's office.

the incident was first reported to county officials by precinct advisor james whited (incident report posted in full below) who had informed coulter that her true home address, at 242 seabreeze ave., did not match the one on her voter registration. coulter, had inexplicably used her real estate agent's address on the voter registration form which includes a signature next to an oath which says, in part, "all information on this form is true" and acknowledges the third-degree felony penalties for lying. - the brad blog

and yet another case of "iokiurar"

oh, and late today, what do you know? in addition to mitt romney, yet another high-profile republican is being reported to have committed apparent voter fraud: missouri's u.s. congressman todd akin, who is set to run for the u.s. senate against democratic sen. clare mccaskill next year, abruptly changed his voter registration last month on the very same day the st. louis post-dispatch reported that akin had been voting for years from a property where he did not live. - the brad blog

i also believe that there was some sort of talk decades ago about then congressman michael huffington filing tax returns saying that his main residence was in texas while "representing" the santa barbara california area in d.c.

they screamed and yelled to "shut down acorn" because of "imagined" voter fraud cases, and yet not a word about these real cases.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Imagine Your Face, There In His Place...

Can I Call Joe Biden (VP-BofA) An Idiot Now?

The White House uses Joe Biden's email account to convince me to vote Republican for President in 2012*:

And I bet you didn't know that your tax dollars pay for a website dedicated to the Desert Tortoise. I'm sure it's a wonderful species, but we can't afford to have a standalone site devoted to every member of the animal kingdom.

Not even the state of Arizona is as stupid as Biden and his handlers, including BarryO, who "asked me [Biden] to head up the Campaign to Cut Waste." Especially since the clueless "I'm sure it's a wonderful species" translates to "No, I couldn't be bothered to find out if the example being sent to millions of registered voters made any sense."

*Since I live in New Jersey, where the Republican administration is trying to destroy the best public education system in any state, this is unlikely to endanger the chance that the former Senator-MBNA is re-elected.

why i will not go to las vegas

the final passage of assembly bill 571 in the dark of the night, hours before the 76th session of the legislature ended, shows once again that special interest groups that can hire high-powered lobbyists win because money talks. nevada is now the first state in the country to roll back its smoking law — the nevada clean indoor air act. - las vegas sun

environmental news stories sunday

another round up of those pesky little stories that, more than likely, weren't bandied about in witty repartee on the talking white male head dominated teevee shows. just because they aren't being covered by the "corporate media" doesn't mean they aren't important to understand the "big picture" of what we are doing to the planet...and what the planet is doing right back to us.

but...i digress. onward.

addison county family lived nightmare over arsenic in the well. - when gov. peter shumlin issued a surprise veto of a bill that would require all new residential wells be tested for a variety of toxic elements, he said he wanted to avoid levying a mandate on vermonters. he said most vermonters’ water was as clean as could be. he hadn’t met bjorn coburn. - burlington free press

resident fights oil company for his property rights. - a legal but controversial tool of oil and gas drillers across the nation is getting as severe a test as gary williams can give it. williams has single-handedly stalled a proposed 80-acre crude oil drilling project by refusing to sign papers to allow drilling underneath or near his potentially oil-rich property. - evansville courier & press

three gorges, and a myriad of doubts. - 15 years after chinese officials relocated 1.4 million citizens as a "small sacrifice" for the desperately needed clean power that three gorges dam promised to provide, the worst drought in five decades has triggered a torrent of criticism on a host of environmental problems attributed to the dam - toronto globe & mail

harvard study looks at traffic and health. - a new study out of harvard university's center for risk analysis estimates that pollution caused by traffic congestion in the nation's largest urban areas led to 2,200 premature deaths in the country last year, with a related public health cost of at least $18 billion - charleston post & courier

in a war of words, makers of plastic bags go to court. - the plastic bag industry, increasingly on the defensive as municipal bag bans proliferate, has gone on the attack against chicobag, a competitor that bills itself as an eco-friendly alternative. a federal lawsuit in south carolina accuses chicobag of illegal trash-talking about plastic bag waste. - new york times

return of the rainbow warrior. - the 1985 bombing of the rainbow warrior made the converted fishing trawler a campaigning icon. now, in its 40th anniversary year, greenpeace is launching its first purpose-built protest ship – one of the most technologically advanced vessels to set sail - london observer

'green' ship makes first great lakes stop in hamilton. - the mv federal yukina may look like any other ship as she slices through the water of the great lakes or the pacific ocean. she just burns a lot less fuel in the effort. as much as 15 per cent less - hamilton spectator

epa agrees to reveal secret identities of potentially risky chemicals. - the environmental protection agency today made public the names of more than 150 chemicals whose identities in health and safety studies had been kept confidential, a move cheered by environmental advocates as a meaningful step towards greater openness - center for public integrity

'i watch them die, young and old.' - members of the spokane tribe worked gladly in the uranium mines on their land. nthey fear radiation from the mines is killing them. the radiation is from the northwest’s only open-pit uranium mines – an all-but- forgotten chapter of washington’s cold war history - spokane spokesman review

study: bpa chemical exposure is underestimated. - exposure to the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol a has been underestimated, because prior lab tests have looked at single exposures rather than daily diets, the university of missouri reports - usa toady

are we underestimating climate change impact? - as climate warming causes the oceans to rise, subsequent flooding and storm surges are sure to impact people in coastal areas around the world. but estimates for how many people will be inundated have fallen short by many millions of people, suggests a new study - discovery channel

monster wildfire in arizona: a glimpse of what climate change could bring. - a wildfire in arizona that has blackened an area half the size of rhode island, prompted the evacuation of some 2,000 people, and is threatening long-distance power lines serving new mexico and texas, is the latest poster child for what some scientists see as a long-term trend fueled by climate change - christian science monitor

thousands of buildings face climate wipeout. - greg combet has said a report commissioned by the department of climate change shows that the risk to coastal areas from rising sea levels is widespread, and will probably increase. he used the report to support the government's argument that a price on carbon is urgently needed - sydney morning herald

as arctic sea ice retreats, storms take toll on the land. - a recent study found that ice losses along 40-mile stretch of alaska coastline along the beaufort sea, a 45-foot retreat from 2008 to 2009 alone, are due to greater exposure of the land to storms from an increasingly ice-free arctic and also to melting permafrost that hastens crumbling of the coastline - yale environment 360

Friday, June 10, 2011

skippy's friday night music club

peter gabriel is coming to town tomorrow. i can't afford to go, but i live close enough to the santa barbara bowl that i'm hoping i can hear a little bit of it! but, this is one of my favorite songs of his...

in the land of beer lovers

the governor wages war on beer. yeah...that's going to go over real well. love the corporate mega beer makers...hate the small indy craft brewers.

tucked into wisconsin gov. scott walker’s (r) much-discussed budget was a little-noticed provision to overhaul the state’s regulation of the beer industry. in a state long associated with beer, the provision will make it much more difficult for the wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.

the new provision treats craft brewers — the 60 of whom make up just 5 percent of the beer market in wisconsin — like corporate mega-brewers, forcing them to use a wholesale distributor to market their product. under the provision, it would be illegal, for instance, for a small brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. they’ll have to hire a middle man to do it instead.

but more noteworthy than the provision itself is how it was enacted. the provision was quietly slipped in the massive budget legislation without any consultation from independent craft brewers, who are justifiably outraged by it. one group that clearly did have input, however, is one of the world’s largest beer makers — millercoors: - think progress

and what would walker-era legislation be if it didn't offer more power to state government? the legislation also takes the power of licensing of wholesalers away from municipalities and puts them under the control of the state department of revenue.- the daily page

to the craft brewers and brewpubs of wisconsin...we here at skippy international salute you!

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